Friday, July 06, 2007

Take the political big names and the millionaires out of the state treasurer's office. It's the TREASURER, for pete's sake! Let the elected governor be responsible for who's treasurer. Lots of states do it.

5 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I'm not really much of a Sanford fan, but having so many elected state-wide executive branch officials is a left over from the days when the governor's office was little more than the chief lobbist in a state government that was ruled (and I mean totally ruled) by the legislature. Look, SC was the last state to allow its citizens to vote directly for president (if you can ignore the archaic electoral college obsticle we still have). How many people know that SC legislators were the ones who cast our states only real votes for president for more than half our our history from 1788 until at least the early 20th century, I think.

Even with our currently do-nothing know-nothing legislature, SC is still a weak governor/strong legistature state. Line item vetos, 2nd terms for governors, a cabinet system and DOT reform represent progress for improving leadership within the executive branch. This becomes more important as the legislature often seems virtually stuck in the 19th century under our 1890's "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman era constitution. Memory (and suspecians) of corrupt Reconstruction excesses and equally abusive Jim Crow which followed are slowly fading. We need a 21st century chief executive. Make the Governor responsible. The buck should stop in his office.

Now for some partisanship. If the people really felt that the governor had power to lead on all fronts, Sanford might not have been elected. He's a bully pulpit libertarian, not an effective hands-on and practical political leader.

Couldn't have said it better myself (and probably not half as well). New Jersey--now there's a strong governor state; Texas--if anything the governor is weaker than in South Carolina. Explains a lot about Bush, doesn't it?

There is one state wide office we don't elect but probably should and that's the chief insurance commissioner. As it now stands insurance companies have bought off both the legislature and the governor's office. We need a truly independent person who can and will regulate insurance companies. Don't give us Sanford's "let the free market dictate" arguments. These are not "take it or leave it services", they are often mandated. The industry needs to be regulated by someone heading up a consumer oriented agency that it's not able to buy. The present appointed insurance commissioner is an insurance industry defender. He's a fox employed to guard the hen house. Let an elected insurance commissioner try to take even ten cents in insurance industry campaign contributions and watch the policy holders vote against them. Let a voter's "free market" determine who can say what is a fair industry standard and not an industry insider.

I believe it Thomas Jefferson who said the primary duty of a democracy, if only for its preservation, was to constantly endeavor to have an educated electorate. What an appropriate statement of purpose attributed to America's most recognizable "universal man". Jefferson was a student of the Age of Enlightenment and one of its best known exponents in America. It was this intellectual movement that taught Jefferson and others like him to see virtue in the individual and the society that sought to expand the boundaries of all available knowledge for themselves and their fellow citizens. If a there are critics of this search who also defend CCSD just as it is, then that may do much to explain why our schools in Charleston suck.